DOC NYC’s eleventh annual Visionaries Tribute will take place on Wednesday, November 13, 2024 at Gotham Hall. If you’re interested in purchasing a seat or table please contact Visionaries Tribute Producer Allyson Morgan at allyson@docnyc.net.
Support for the Visionaries Tribute comes from Netflix. Additional support comes from Supporting Sponsors Hulu and National Geographic Documentary Films.
2024 Lifetime Achievement
Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Alan Berliner is a virtuoso of essayistic documentary. His films are characterized by a first person perspective, playful use of archive materials, and inventive editing and sound design. His works include Letter to the Editor, an eclectic meditation on newspaper photography that played at DOC NYC; First Cousin, Once Removed, on a poet’s experience with Alzheimer’s disease, that was on the DOC NYC and Oscar short lists; Wide Awake about the director’s experiences with insomnia; The Sweetest Sound interviewing other people with the name Alan Berliner; Nobody’s Business profiling his father; Intimate Stranger profiling his maternal grandfather; and Family Album, a cinematic collage drawn from home movies.
2024 Lifetime Achievement
Emmy Award-nominated filmmaker Marcia Smith is president and co-founder of Firelight Media, a nonprofit organization that supports, resources, and advocates on behalf of documentary filmmakers of color. Over the past 25 years, Firelight Media’s artist programs have supported more than 250 filmmakers, who have premiered their films at esteemed festivals and gone on to earn numerous awards. Smith has written several films alongside filmmaker Stanley Nelson including Harriet Tubman: Visions of Freedom; Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities; Through the Fire: The Legacy of Barack Obama; Freedom Riders; Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple; Marcus Garvey: Look for Me in the Whirlwind; and The Murder of Emmett Till
Past Winners
2023 Lifetime Achievement
2023 Lifetime Achievement
2022 Lifetime Achievement
2022 Lifetime Achievement
2021 Lifetime Achievement
2021 Lifetime Achievement
2020 Lifetime Achievement
2020 Lifetime Achievement
2019 Lifetime Achievement
2019 Lifetime Achievement
2018 Lifetime Achievement
2018 Lifetime Achievement
2017 Lifetime Achievement
2017 Lifetime Achievement
2016 Lifetime Achievement
2016 Lifetime Achievement
2015 Lifetime Achievement
2015 Lifetime Achievement
2015 Lifetime Achievement
2014 Lifetime Achievement
2014 Lifetime Achievement
2014 Lifetime Achievement
Alan Berliner
Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Alan Berliner is a virtuoso of essayistic documentary. His films are characterized by a first person perspective, playful use of archive materials, and inventive editing and sound design. His works include Letter to the Editor, an eclectic meditation on newspaper photography that played at DOC NYC; First Cousin, Once Removed, on a poet’s experience with Alzheimer’s disease, that was on the DOC NYC and Oscar short lists; Wide Awake about the director’s experiences with insomnia; The Sweetest Sound interviewing other people with the name Alan Berliner; Nobody’s Business profiling his father; Intimate Stranger profiling his maternal grandfather; and Family Album, a cinematic collage drawn from home movies.
Marcia Smith
Emmy Award-nominated filmmaker Marcia Smith is president and co-founder of Firelight Media, a nonprofit organization that supports, resources, and advocates on behalf of documentary filmmakers of color. Over the past 25 years, Firelight Media’s artist programs have supported more than 250 filmmakers, who have premiered their films at esteemed festivals and gone on to earn numerous awards. Smith has written several films alongside filmmaker Stanley Nelson including Harriet Tubman: Visions of Freedom; Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities; Through the Fire: The Legacy of Barack Obama; Freedom Riders; Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple; Marcus Garvey: Look for Me in the Whirlwind; and The Murder of Emmett Till.
Michael Moore
Michael Moore launched his documentary career with Roger & Me in 1989. He went on to break the documentary box office record with his 2002 Oscar-winning film Bowling for Columbine and the Palme d’Or-winning Fahrenheit 9/11, which remains the highest-grossing documentary of all time. His other notable films include the Oscar-nominated Sicko, Capitalism: A Love Story, Where to Invade Next, and Fahrenheit 11/9. He won the Emmy Award for his prime-time NBC series TV Nation and is one of America’s top-selling nonfiction authors, with such books as Stupid White Men; Dude, Where’s My Country? and Here Comes Trouble. He is the host of the podcast Rumble with Michael Moore.
Deborah Shaffer
Deborah Shaffer began making social issue documentaries as a member of the Newsreel collective in the 1970s. Her first feature documentary, The Wobblies, was recently added to the National Film Registry. Her directing credits include Witness to War: Dr. Charlie Clements, which won the Academy Award for Short Documentary; as well as the features Fire From the Mountain; Dance of Hope; From the Ashes: 10 Artists; and Queen of Hearts: Audrey Flack. She co-directed and produced To Be Heard, which won awards at numerous festivals, including the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize at the inaugural DOC NYC.
Geralyn White Dreyfous
Geralyn White Dreyfous has over 180 credits as a producer and executive producer of documentary films. Those credits include Born Into Brothels; The Invisible War; 16 Shots; The Hunting Ground; Won’t You Be My Neighbor?; The Great Hack; Us Kids; The Truffle Hunters; Mija; Aftershock; and The Grab. She stands as Founder and Board Chair of Utah Film Center, Co-Founder of Impact Partners, and a founding member of Gamechanger Films. She spent an early part of her career at the Philanthropic Initiative in Boston and taught Documentary and Narrative writing with Dr. Robert Coles at Harvard University.
Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog was born in Munich on September 5, 1942. He grew up in a remote mountain village in Bavaria and studied History and German Literature in Munich and Pittsburgh. He made his first film in 1961 at the age of 19. Since then he has produced, written, and directed more than sixty feature- and documentary films including Lessons in Darkness; Little Dieter Needs to Fly; My Best Fiend; Grizzly Man; and Encounters at the End of the World. His film Cave of Forgotten Dreams was the opening night film of the first DOC NYC festival in 2010. His most recent documentaries are Theater of Thought and The Fire Within.
Joan Churchill
Joan Churchill has a distinguished documentary career. She began her career as a cameraperson on films such as Gimme Shelter; Hail, Hail Rock and Roll and Jimi Plays Berkeley. She is a long-time collaborator with Nick Broomfield with directing credits on Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer; Soldier Girls and Juvenile Liaison. Among her many credits as a cinematographer are the documentaries Last Days in Vietnam, Shut Up & Sing and Down from the Mountain. She is the first documentary-focused director of photography to be accepted into the American Society of Cinematographers (A.S.C.) and one of the few women.
Raoul Peck
Raoul Peck was born in Haiti and educated in Congo, Brooklyn and France. His credits as a documentary director include Lumumba, Death of a Prophet; Fatal Assistance; the Oscar-nominated I Am Not Your Negro; and the four-part HBO Documentary Films’ groundbreaking series Exterminate all the Brutes. His directing credits in fiction films include Lumumba; Sometimes in April; Moloch Tropical; and The Young Karl Marx. His complex career includes an 18-month stint as Haiti’s Minister of Culture, two years teaching at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and nine years as the President of the French national film school La Fémis in Paris.
Jean Tsien
2020 Visionaries Tribute Lifetime Achievement Award
Jean Tsien
is a veteran documentary editor, producer, and story consultant. In 2020, she served as a producer on 76 Days and an executive producer on the series Asian Americans. Her editing credits include: Something Within Me, Scottsboro: An American Tragedy, Malcolm X: Make It Plain, Solar Mamas, Please Vote For Me, Dixie Chicks: Shut Up & Sing, Miss Sharon Jones! and The Apollo. Her credits as an executive producer include Plastic China, Please Remember Me, People’s Republic of Desire, and Our Time Machine. Born in Taiwan, she is based in New York City.
Sam Pollard
2020 Visionaries Tribute Lifetime Achievement Award
Sam Pollard is an Emmy Award-winning and Oscar-nominated director and producer whose latest film is
MLK/FBI. His past work includes the documentaries
Four Little Girls, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, Slavery by Another Name, Sammy Davis, Jr.: I Gotta Be Me, ACORN and the Firestorm, Why We Hate, and
Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children. Pollard also directed two episodes of the groundbreaking series Eyes on the Prize II. Since 1994 Pollard has served on the faculty of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Martin Scorsese
2019 Visionaries Tribute Lifetime Achievement Award
Martin Scorsese has interwoven documentary making throughout his distinguished career. His latest nonfiction work is Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story. Among his other acclaimed nonfiction films are The 50 Year Argument; George Harrison: Living in the Material World; No Direction Home: Bob Dylan; The Blues; My Voyage to Italy; The Last Waltz; A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies; Public Speaking; and Italianamerican. His latest project is the narrative feature The Irishman.
[Biography from 2019]
Michael Apted
2019 Visionaries Tribute Lifetime Achievement Award
Michael Apted is the director of the ground-breaking 7 Up series, a study of the British class system that brings forth a new film every seven years. The latest film in his series, 63 Up, presented by BritBox, will be released in fall 2019. His other documentaries include Married in America; Me & Isaac Newton; Moving the Mountain; Inspirations; Incident at Oglala; and Bring on the Night.
[Biography from 2019]
Orlando Bagwell
2018 Visionaries Tribute Lifetime Achievement Award
Orlando Bagwell’s directing credits include Citizen King, A Hymn for Alvin Ailey, Malcolm X: Make It Plain, and two episodes in the landmark Eyes on the Prize series. Serving as a program officer at the Ford Foundation for nearly a decade, Bagwell established the $50 million JustFilms fund. He is currently finishing a documentary on Gil Scott-Heron.
[Biography from 2018]
Wim Wenders
2018 Visionaries Tribute Lifetime Achievement Award
Wim Wenders directed the Oscar-nominated documentaries The Salt of the Earth, Pina and Buena Vista Social Club, along with nonfiction titles such as The Blues and Room 666 and celebrated fiction films such as Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire. His latest documentary is Pope Francis: A Man of His Word.
[Biography from 2018]
Sheila Nevins
2017 Visionaries Tribute Lifetime Achievement Award
Sheila Nevins is President of HBO Documentary Films and has overseen documentaries for the channel for over 30 years. She has supervised the production of over 1,000 documentary programs for HBO. As an executive producer or producer, she has received 32 Primetime Emmy Awards, 34 News and Documentary Emmys, and 42 George Foster Peabody Awards. During her tenure, HBO’s documentaries have gone on to win 26 Academy Awards. She is the author of the New York Times bestselling book You Don’t Look Your Age… and Other Fairy Tales.
[Biography from 2017]
Errol Morris
2017 Visionaries Tribute Lifetime Achievement Award
Errol Morris has been a continuous innovator in the documentary form with films such as The B-Side, Gates of Heaven; Vernon, Florida; The Thin Blue Line; Fast, Cheap & Out of Control; Mr. Death; the Oscar-winning The Fog of War; and Standard Operating Procedure and the Netflix series Wormwood. His film Tabloid was the Closing Night Film of DOC NYC’s first year in 2010; and The Unknown Known was the Opening Night film of the 2013 festival.
[Biography from 2017]
Stanley Nelson
2016 Visionaries Tribute Lifetime Achievement Award
Stanley Nelson is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, MacArthur “genius” Fellow, member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and has multiple industry awards to his credit. Nelson is the director of documentary features including Freedom Riders, Jonestown: The Life and Death of People’s Temple and The Murder of Emmett Till. He is also co-founder of Firelight Media, a non-profit organization that provides technical education, funding and professional support to emerging documentarians.
[Biography from 2016]
Jonathan Demme
2016 Visionaries Tribute Lifetime Achievement Award
Jonathan Demme began his career as a writer and producer with Roger Corman in 1971 and has directed and produced more than 40 movies since. His films have been nominated for 20 Academy Awards, including Beloved, Melvin and Howard, Philadelphia, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s Who Am I This Time?, Rachel Getting Married, The Manchurian Candidate, and Silence of the Lambs, for which he won the Oscar for Best Director in 1991. His documentaries and performance films include Justin Timberlake + the Tennessee Kids, Cousin Bobby, The Agronomist, Haiti Dreams of Democracy, Stop Making Sense, Swimming to Cambodia, Neil Young Heart of Gold, Neil Young Trunk Show, Neil Young Journeys, Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains, I’m Carolyn Parker, The Good the Mad and the Beautiful, New Home Moves from the Lower 9th Ward, Tavis Smiley’s Been In the Storm Too Long and Enzo Avitabile Music Life.
[Biography from 2016]
Jon Alpert
2015 Visionaries Tribute Lifetime Achievement Award
Jon Alpert co-founded New York’s Downtown Community Television (DCTV), the country’s oldest non-profit community media center. He is the winner of 16 Emmy Awards and the recipient of four DuPont-Columbia Awards; his documentaries include One Year in the Life of Crime, Baghdad ER, and the Oscar-nominated shorts China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province and Redemption. Alpert’s latest film is Mariela Castro’s March: Cuba’s LGBT Revolution.
[Biography from 2015]
Barbara Kopple
2015 Visionaries Tribute Lifetime Achievement Award
Barbara Kopple is a two-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker, having won for both Harlan County USA and American Dream. In 1991, Harlan County USA was named to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. Kopple’s other celebrated films include Fallen Champ: The Untold Story of Mike Tyson, Wild Man Blues, Shut Up & Sing, Running From Crazy, A Conversation With Gregory Peck, Hot Type: 150 Years of The Nation, and her latest, Miss Sharon Jones!
[Biography from 2015]
Frederick Wiseman
2015 Visionaries Tribute Lifetime Achievement Award
Frederick Wiseman is a pioneer of observational documentary filmmaking, starting with his acclaimed 1967 debut Titicut Follies. He is the recipient of the George Polk Career Award and the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion, among many honors. Wiseman has directed dozens of films, from early classics such as High School and Law and Order to recent works La Danse, Boxing Gym, Crazy Horse, At Berkeley, National Gallery, and his latest, In Jackson Heights.
[Biography from 2015]
D.A. Pennebaker
2014 Visionaries Tribute Lifetime Achievement Award
Chris Hegedus
2014 Visionaries Tribute Lifetime Achievement Award
Albert Maysles
2014 Visionaries Tribute Lifetime Achievement Award
2024 Leading Light Recipient
Jenni Wolfson is a fierce human rights advocate and a trailblazer in the art of storytelling for social change. As the CEO of Chicken & Egg Pictures, her strategic vision has evolved the organization into a powerhouse of support for women and gender-expansive documentary filmmakers. A member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and BAFTA, an Aspen Ideas Fellow, and a Dial Fellow of Emerson Collective, Jenni has been honored with the Women’s Media Center Lifetime Achievement Award.
Past Winners
2023 Leading Light Recipient
2022 Leading Light Recipient
2021 Leading Light Recipient
2020 Leading Light Recipient
2019 Leading Light Recipient
2018 Leading Light Recipient
2017 Leading Light Recipient
2016 Leading Light Recipient
2015 Leading Light Recipient
2014 Leading Light Recipient
Jenni Wolfson
Jenni Wolfson is a fierce human rights advocate and a trailblazer in the art of storytelling for social change. As the CEO of Chicken & Egg Pictures, her strategic vision has evolved the organization into a powerhouse of support for women and gender-expansive documentary filmmakers. A member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and BAFTA, an Aspen Ideas Fellow, and a Dial Fellow of Emerson Collective, Jenni has been honored with the Women’s Media Center Lifetime Achievement Award.
Erika Dilday
Erika Dilday is the Executive Director of American Documentary Inc. and the Executive Producer of its award-winning documentary series POV on PBS and America ReFramed on WORLD Channel. Previously, she was the CEO of Futuro Media Group and the Executive Director of Maysles Documentary Center where she oversaw community cinema, filmmaking programs and produced the documentary In Transit.
Sonya Childress
Sonya Childress is a cultural strategist who believes in the transformative power of film. She co-directs the Color Congress, an ecosystem-builder that resources, supports, and connects organizations led by people of color that serve nonfiction filmmakers, leaders, and audiences of color across the US and territories, with Sahar Driver. As Senior Fellow with the Perspective Fund, she supported projects that moved the documentary field towards equity and transparency. She spent two decades leading impact campaigns and distribution strategies at Active Voice, California Newsreel and Firelight Media, where she piloted a fellowship for impact producers of color. She is a board member of the Center for Cultural Power, a member of the Documentary Accountability Working Group, a working group member for ‘The Lens Reflected’ study, and was a 2015 Rockwood JustFilms Fellow.
Chi-hui Yang
Chi-hui Yang is a Senior Program Officer for Ford Foundation’s JustFilms initiative and makes grants globally in documentary film, new media and visual storytelling. He manages a portfolio of grants that support artist-led, socially engaged filmmaking, advance a more equitable and inclusive documentary sector, and build the power of organizations and individuals grounded in communities of color and the Global South. At Ford he has helped found a number of innovative funding initiatives, including Critical Minded, which supports and builds the capacity of cultural critics of color.
Before joining the foundation in 2015, Chi-hui worked extensively as a film curator, including as a selection committee member for MoMA’s Doc Fortnight and a consulting series producer for PBS’s POV. From 2000 to 2010, he was director of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, the largest event of its kind in the nation.
Yvonne Welbon
2020 Visionaries Tribute Leading Light Award
Yvonne Welbon
is an award-winning filmmaker and founder of the Chicago-based non-profit Sisters in Cinema, inspired by her documentary of the same name about the history of Black women feature film directors. She is a Senior Creative Consultant at Chicken & Egg Pictures, and has produced and distributed dozens of award-winning films, including Living With Pride: Ruth Ellis @100, The New Black, and Unapologetic. Raised in an Afro-Latinx Honduran household on the South Side of Chicago, Welbon holds a BA from Vassar College, a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a PhD from Northwestern University.
Cynthia Lopez
2019 Visionaries Tribute Leading Light Award
Cynthia Lopez is the Executive Director of New York Women in Film & Television. She is the former Commissioner of the New York City’s Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment. Prior to working as Commissioner she was Executive Vice President and co-Executive Producer of the award-winning PBS documentary series American Documentary | POV, and was involved in the organization’s strategic growth and creative development for 14 years.
[Biography from 2019]
Tabitha Jackson
2018 Visionaries Tribute Leading Light Award
Tabitha Jackson has served as the Director of the Documentary Film Program at the Sundance Institute since 2013. She previously worked as the Head of Arts and Performance at Channel 4 Television in London.
[Biography from 2018]
Cara Mertes
2017 Visionaries Tribute Leading Light Award
Cara Mertes is the director of the JustFilms initiative at The Ford Foundation. JustFilms works globally to support artist-led films and new media projects, strengthen organizations and networks for artist-driven content, and develop new leadership and resources in this field. Prior to leading JustFilms, Mertes also served as director of the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program and executive director of the PBS documentary series POV.
[Biography from 2017]
Molly Thompson
2016 Visionaries Tribute Leading Light Award
Molly Thompson is senior vice president of Feature Films at A+E Studios. In 2005, she founded A+E Studios’ feature documentary production arm, A&E IndieFilms, which under her leadership has gained an unprecedented track record, garnering three Academy Award nominations for Cartel Land, Jesus Camp, and Murderball, Sundance wins in several categories for Life, Animated, Cartel Land, The September Issue, and American Teen, along with hundreds of other awards and nominations.
Thompson also serves as executive producer for documentaries produced under A+E Studios’ HISTORY Films banner, including Drunk Stones Brilliant Dead: The Story of the National Lampoon, The Unknown Known, No Place on Earth, and Cave of Forgotten Dreams.
[Biography from 2016]
Tom Quinn
2015 Visionaries Tribute Leading Light Award
Tom Quinn’s career spans 20 years in distribution with a notable streak of acclaimed documentaries. He recently launched a new film company with Jason Janego and Tim League that will distribute Michael Moore’s Where to Invade Next. As co-founder of RADiUS, Quinn championed documentaries such as The Hunting Ground and Oscar winners 20 Feet From Stardom and Citizenfour. At Magnolia Pictures, his documentary acquisitions included Man On Wire; Food, Inc; and Client 9; and at Samuel Goldwyn Films, Super Size Me.
[Biography from 2015]
Dan Cogan
Dan Cogan is one of the most prominent non-fiction producers working today. Both an Academy Award®- and Emmy Award®-winner, Dan founded Story Syndicate with Liz Garbus in 2019. Previously, Dan was the founding Executive Director of Impact Partners. He has produced more than 100 films and series, including Icarus, which won the 2018 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature; Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, which won the 2019 Independent Spirit Award for Best Documentary; The Cove, which won the 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature; and The Apollo, which won the 2020 Emmy for Outstanding Documentary.
2024 Drew Award Recipient
Oscar nominated director Lucy Walker has deftly used observational cinema throughout her work, exemplified by her latest film Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa that tells a multi-layered story of personal struggle against an epic backdrop. Walker’s previous documentaries include Bring Your Own Brigade on forest fires; The Crash Reel on extreme sports and brain injuries; The Waste Land set in a Brazilian garbage dump; Blindsight about blind climbers on Mount Everest; and The Devil’s Playground about Amish teenagers undergoing a rite of passage.
Past Winners
2023 Drew Award Recipient
2022 Drew Award Recipient
2021 Drew Award Recipient
2020 Drew Award Recipient
2019 Drew Award Recipients
2018 Drew Award Recipients
2017 Drew Award Recipients
2016 Drew Award Recipient
2015 Drew Award Recipient
2014 Drew Award Recipient
Lucy Walker
Oscar nominated director Lucy Walker has deftly used observational cinema throughout her work, exemplified by her latest film Mountain Queen: The Summits of Lhakpa Sherpa that tells a multi-layered story of personal struggle against an epic backdrop. Walker’s previous documentaries include Bring Your Own Brigade on forest fires; The Crash Reel on extreme sports and brain injuries; The Waste Land set in a Brazilian garbage dump; Blindsight about blind climbers on Mount Everest; and The Devil’s Playground about Amish teenagers undergoing a rite of passage.
Maite Alberdi
An Academy Awards® Nominated Director and Producer, Maite is the first Chilean woman to be nominated to the Oscars. She has developed a particular style that is characterized by the intimate portrait of small worlds; her renowned label has led her to be one of the most important voices of Latin American documentary. In 2011 she released his first feature film, “The Lifeguard”. Through Micromundo, her production company, she directed her second film “La Once”, which has won more than 12 international awards, and was nominated for the 2016 Goya for Best Ibero-American Film. In 2016 she released the short film “I Am Not From Here,” nominated for the European Films Award, and also premiered her third feature film, “The Grown-Ups,” which got 10 international awards. In Sundance 2020, she premiered her last film, “The Mole Agent”, the first Chilean documentary to be nominated for the Academy Awards®. Maite is co-author of the book “Documentary Film Theories in Chile 1957-1973”. She has produced the feature films: “Sexual Life of Plants”, “Kings” and “All Come Back”. She works as a university instructor, and teaches documentary workshops and project development in Chile and abroad. In 2013, she was selected as Global Shaper, young leaders by the World Economic Forum (WEF), and in 2018 she was invited to be a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Science.
Ondi Timoner
Director and Producer (Last Flight Home)
Ondi Timoner has the rare distinction of winning the U.S. Grand Jury Prize at Sundance twice — for Dig! (2004), about the collision of art and commerce through the eyes of two rival rock bands, and We Live in Public (2009), about the loss of privacy online through a NY social experiment. Her other films include Join Us, about mind control; Cool It, about climate change; Brand: A Second Coming, about the transformation of comedian/author/activist Russell Brand; the 10-hour series Jungletown, about an intentional community in remote Panama; and Coming Clean, about the opioid crisis. Her latest film, Last Flight Home, documents her father’s final days.
Peter Nicks
Director/Cinematographer, The Waiting Room
Peter Nicks is an Emmy Award-winning cinematographer/director known for his immersive camera work and cinema vérité style. He helmed the critically acclaimed feature documentary The Waiting Room, which won an Independent Spirit Award and was shortlisted for an Academy Award in 2012. The Force–the second in a trilogy of timely, immersive docs exploring the interconnected narratives of health care, criminal justice and education in Oakland, CA–won the 2017 Sundance Director’s Prize. Homeroom, the final film in the trilogy, will premiere at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Nicks is now in development on Anthem, a feature-length documentary exploring both the history and current life of The Star Spangled Banner. Nicks, a 2015 United States Artist Fellow, received his B.A. in English from Howard University and his masters in journalism from UC Berkeley.
Alexander Nanau
2020 Visionaries Tribute Robert and Anne Drew Award for Documentary Excellence
Alexander Nanau
is a German-Romanian filmmaker. His latest documentary Collective premiered at the 2019 Venice and Toronto film festivals and will be released in the United States in November by Magnolia Pictures and Participant. His previous documentaries include The World According to Ion B, winner of an International Emmy Award; and Toto and His Sisters, nominated for an European Academy Award.
Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert
2019 Visionaries Tribute Robert and Anne Drew Award for Documentary Excellence
Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert are the filmmaking team behind American Factory; the Oscar-nominated short The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant; and the feature A Lion in the House. Reichert was Oscar-nominated for her documentary feature films Union Maids and Seeing Red: Stories of American Communists. Her first film was Growing Up Female, which is on the National Film Registry. Bognar’s solo films are Personal Belongings, Picture Day and Gravel. The award includes a $5,000 cash prize to the filmmakers contributed by Drew Associates, under the helm of Jill Drew.
[Biography from 2019]
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin
2018 Visionaries Tribute Robert and Anne Drew Award for Documentary Excellence
Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin are the filmmaking team behind Meru and Free Solo. Vasarhelyi has additional solo directing credits on other films including Youssou N’Dour: I Bring What I Love, Touba, A Normal Life, and the award-winning Incorruptible. Chin is also a professional climber and has an accomplished career as a photographer for National Geographic and other outlets.
[Biography from 2018]
Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady
2017 Visionaries Tribute Robert and Anne Drew Award for Documentary Excellence
Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s films include One of Us, Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You, Detropia, 12th& Delaware, Jesus Camp, and The Boys of Baraka.
[Biography from 2017]
Dawn Porter
2016 Visionaries Tribute Robert and Anne Drew Award for Documentary Excellence
Dawn Porter’s film Trapped premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Special Jury Award for Social Impact Filmmaking. Her documentary Gideon’s Army won the Sundance Film Festival Editing Award and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and an Emmy. Her other films include Spies of Mississippi and Rise: The Promise of My Brother’s Keeper.
[Biography from 2016]
Kim Longinotto
2015 Visionaries Tribute Robert and Anne Drew Award for Documentary Excellence
For over thirty five years, Kim Longinotto has made acclaimed documentaries that have won awards from BAFTA, the Sundance Film Festival and the San Francisco International Film Festival, among others.
[Biography from 2015]
Laura Poitras
2014 Visionaries Tribute Robert and Anne Drew Award for Documentary Excellence